[About the Correct Balance Between the Sahih Hadith and the Fiqh of the Eminent Fuqaha of This Umma.]

Many great scholars of Islam have taken a great deal of time and trouble to explain the correct approach towards hadith which are attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as well as the application thereof.

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You, if you are a lay Muslim, probably consider the collections of ‘Sahih Bukhari’ and ‘Muslim’ to be the earliest, most authoritative or ‘canonical’ collections of hadith or alleged sayings of the Prophet. In fact, the earliest collection of hadith is by the Hanafis, and then the famous ‘Muwatta’ of Imam Malik. The very first book written after the generation of the Sahabah (companions of the Prophet) was the ‘Kitab Al Athar’ of the Hanafis, containing numerous hadith, and as with the ‘Muwatta’ of Malik, with very short chains as well as their application to jurisprudential considerations.

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The danger of harassing Muslims by insisting that hadith is ‘Sahih’ so ’how dare you not believe in it or follow it’ is manifest in the fact that it is not only hadith narrations which can be Sahih (and nor are by any means all or even most sahih hadith and narrations in the collections of Bukhari and Muslim. Again, this is a consensus of Sunnis and admitted by Imam Bukhari in the full title of his Sahih – which is called the ‘Short version of the book’) – the ‘Satanic Verses’ incident is graded as Sahih by hadith masters such as Ibn Hajar and historians such as Imam Tabari … alike – but they knew and articulated clearly that being sahih did not mean ‘true’ but merely that the chain was correct – the content and meaning could well be rejected, as it is in this case. But a person nowadays, suitably mislead by the Salafi movement could be incited, as Ibn Taymiyyah was, to mistake it’s ‘sahih’ status for it’s acceptability and thus to believe that the Prophet compromised on the issue of monotheism [as in the case of the Satanic Verses] – an impossibility rejected by all orthodox Muslims.

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The efforts of the Imams of Hadith are immense, but to put them above the fuqaha of the tabaeen [especially Abu Hanifa] and Salaf and allow them to insult them is incorrect and offensive, especially when the methodology of deviant sects today is to play into the hands of Shia, modernists and missionaries by asserting that hadith has primacy over Fiqh or that Bukhari has primacy over Malik or Shafi or worst of all, Abu Hanifa. This is manifest stupidity.

”Al-Dhahabi and others said: “Its chain of transmission is sound according to the criteria of Bukhari and Muslim.” And note well that the Salaf are the “People of hadith” (ahl al-Hadeeth), and that they do not practice figurative interpretation (la yu’awwiloon)!”